I had a HIS X1950 Pro AGP Turbo card for about 4 weeks. I could not get any higher on drivers than 7.6. It ran fine for 4 weeks untill one day I came home from work went to my pc (in the mood to play a little bf2) Loaded up the game spawned on Wake island.. And the artifacts were bad real bad I will dig up some screen shots for you if you want. I rebooted all of the standard stuff. Removed the drivers and tried to put them back on and I couldnt get above a 4-bit desktop. I RMA it and sold the new one went to Sapphire. PCIe
This is how bad the artifacts were.

Click to expand...

thats overheating GPU or ram for sure. Some 'dead' cards also exhibit that behaviour, without being hot at the time.

Lol this just keeps sounding worse... The card looked so good when I bought it!

I didn't realise my board was designed for DDR1 memory... How ignorant of me. I want to get a new MoBo at some stage, but I'd obviously want to upgrade, so I'd get one that supports a Socket 775 multi-core processor. Problem here is, that's going to cost a bloody lot, because I'll need the new board, and a new processor. Given, I could sell the stuff I have now for a reasonable amount. But it's still quite a financial setback. I'd get a board with PCI-e aswell, but again that means buying a new card. *sigh*

Click to expand...

are you interested in overclocking? if so, 775 is a lot cheaper than it may first appear
The E21x0 chips are dirt cheap, and just by changing the FSB alone you can get quite impressive overclocks (3GHz from a 1.8GHz CPU on stock cooling has been done)

Lol this just keeps sounding worse... The card looked so good when I bought it!

I didn't realise my board was designed for DDR1 memory... How ignorant of me. I want to get a new MoBo at some stage, but I'd obviously want to upgrade, so I'd get one that supports a Socket 775 multi-core processor. Problem here is, that's going to cost a bloody lot, because I'll need the new board, and a new processor. Given, I could sell the stuff I have now for a reasonable amount. But it's still quite a financial setback. I'd get a board with PCI-e aswell, but again that means buying a new card. *sigh*

Click to expand...

Sorry to point out the reality, but it was better to give you the kick you in the guts instead of saying it was going to be fine by doing this or that which 'might' fix the problem.

Well you've already got the ram, see if you can RMA that POS of a GPU for a PCI-E version.
Buy a new motherboard and CPU then flick the old ones off.

if you decide on new hardware, feel free to ask us for advice.
List your country of origin (trust me on that, for prices/local deals) your budget, and what hardware you already have/willing to keep (some people like to keep the old system, others hate reusing parts)

Oh trust me, my artifacts are much worse than that screenshot They cover the whole screen, and remain there when I get back to my windows desktop.

I'm not an overclocker, no. I've honestly never done it. I'd get another Socket 478 Motherboard, but because the cpu I have right now is the best socket 478 intel that was made, if I'm going to have to buy new stuff, I might as well upgrade, if you catch my drift. So a socket 775 is a good call. I reckon I could sell my cpu for a decent price, as I haven't had it that long, and they can be kinda tough to get your hands on.

I live in Australia. I'd like to keep as much of my current hardware as possible! lol

Oh trust me, my artifacts are much worse than that screenshot They cover the whole screen, and remain there when I get back to my windows desktop.

I'm not an overclocker, no. I've honestly never done it. I'd get another Socket 478 Motherboard, but because the cpu I have right now is the best socket 478 intel that was made, if I'm going to have to buy new stuff, I might as well upgrade, if you catch my drift. So a socket 775 is a good call. I reckon I could sell my cpu for a decent price, as I haven't had it that long, and they can be kinda tough to get your hands on.

I live in Australia. I'd like to keep as much of my current hardware as possible! lol

Click to expand...

You'll keep everything except the most expensive parts.
The GPU, CPU and motherboard.

the asrocks can OC to a small extent. On this board, i've reached 4GHz with a P4D CPU (3GHz stock) but around 4.2 the FSB was high enough the IDE channel corrupted and killed the OS.

That said, its 100% stable as long as you dont need to change voltages. These E2x series are fine going from say, 200 FSB to 266FSB (boards official limit for the higher model CPU's) on stock volts, so they pair up nicely.

I take it that it has 2 DDR2 ram slots, and 2 DDR ram slots, yes? So If I wanted to use 4gb of ram, I would use the DDR2 ram I have now, and get 2 DDR chips as well? (Not that I really need 4gb ). It has 2 IDE connectors, so that makes that easy. No onboard graphics, so I'll have to RMA my x1950 before I start using the board, but apart from that I think it's all good.

Oh right, so I can only have 2GB, either DDR2 or DDR1. No worries. There's nothing I would really need 4gb ram for for quite a while anyway I suppose. I'll apply for an RMA when I get home, so I can check out my serial number, product code, and all that jargon. I think I'll look at a Core 2 Quad as well. I can pick one of them up for about $375 AUD.

I downgraded to 7.6, and now a few of my games tell me my drivers are out of date, and they won't play. Haha, goody. But as far as I've seen so far, they seem to be ok. I'll send an e-mail to ATI and ask if this is actually the case.

This card is legendary, it will never die! Mine hasn't let me down yet. Paired with a C2D @ 3.5 you can still play many games at max setting. Stable as heck, I even stressed it soo much as it hit 89 degrees. No artifacts then etc. I have the HIS 256 model with the reference cooler and not the cool looking one, but still works awesome.